Enter the Dragon of Automation: AI

As of February 2017, the Institute of Robotic Process Automation (IRPA) in New York has and renamed itself IRPA AI, expanding its focus on you guessed it – artificial intelligence. Its founder Frank Caale noted that intelligent automation ‘is moving much faster than expected… as these technologies from RPA to AI are available today’. Deloitte, the authority in professional business services worldwide took it further by saying that Robotic Process Automation (which was traditionally the combination of AI and automation) today is, in fact, artificial intelligence itself.

Robots have left the building

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) first entered the primary sector in humbler forms – most notably as robotic arms in car assembly lines. Ever since they famously became a part of the Mars Curiosity Rover, we knew they are leaving the assembly lines for something bigger. Suddenly, there was a rush to hire robotic process automation wizzes. In less than two decades, the word “robot” had seemed like an old term. That’s when we started hearing a lot of the other word, “AI”.

Thinking like humans, sounding like humans

RPA or AI is now prevalent in the tertiary business sectors, replacing bank cashiers and analysing stock exchange patterns in fintech software. Even outsourcing jobs, such as those you can find in tanna.com.au, are starting experience talent shakeup. Advances in Machine Learning has substantially changed RPA. Now it has a mind of its own. Thanks to advancements in speech recognition and natural language processing, RPA already has a voice. If it doesn’t yet have a face, the machine can easily identify yours. Facial recognition software has made great leaps forward. It can analyse how an available rented space looks and ranks them according to the taste and trends of the local marketplace, as in the case with Airbnb.

Intelligent automation, as Deloitte calls it, is changing the way businesses work in every sector of the economy. With the prevailing power of machine learning, machine vision and other new capabilities to come, even the word “automation” may become obsolete very soon.